Whether you’ve got a new iPhone 4S, an iPad 2 or on older iOS device, Instapaper is a must-have application. Now, a huge new update ups the game all around for an already great product. Here’s a first-hand look at what’s new and notable. Read more »
Google’s anticipated launch of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Samsung Nexus Prime phone is coming on Oct. 19. Meanwhile, Google announced that 190 million Android devices have been activated around the world. Those device owners can now speak to each other more easily with Google Translate. Read more »
Opera released updated versions of its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers for Google Android devices on Tuesday. The new software includes a mobile broadband meter showing how much data has been used for browsing. Will device owners give up browsing preferences for less data usage? Read more »
Fab.com, the design flash sales site, is on a roll with 750,000 members since launching four months ago and $100,000 in sales revenue each day. And now its fulfilling its members’ No. 1 request with mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Read more »
Good Technology, which has enabled companies to extend security and management to a fleet of employee devices, is looking to extend its technology to independent software developers, corporate customers and systems integrators, by allowing them to build apps that can ride on Good Technology’s secure platform. Read more »
An Android version of Trover, the snappy mobile app aimed at letting travelers share photos of their off-the-beaten-path discoveries, is now available. For a social app like Trover, which is only as good as the content its users contribute, expanding to Android is key. Read more »
The mobile app economy is growing faster than earlier predictions, now expected to account for 98 billion downloads by 2015. Consumers want their smartphones to have numerous functions and apps, which drive downloads. Meanwhile, music services could be slowing digital music sales. Developers should take note. Read more »
Hoping to solve the challenge of developing mobile apps for multiple platforms, Myriad announced its Alien Dalvik 2.0 product. With it, developers can create an Android app that runs on any number of non-Android devices; even Apple’s iPad, which Myriad will demonstrate next week at CTIA. Read more »
It seems like every day sees the debut of a new photo app with all the social sharing bells and whistles. But Waddle, a new iPhone app launching Wednesday, is most noteworthy for what it doesn’t do — and that’s a refreshingly simple thing. Read more »
Cloud data storage can be awesome. But the fact is, most of us still use personal computers to store the bulk of our data. Polkast, an app for Android and Apple iOS, lets you access all the files on your PC from your mobile device. Read more »
Washington, D.C.’s largest and oldest daily newspaper, the Washington Post, launched a free Android application on Monday. I tested the software and found it to be intuitive to use and full of valuable news content, photo galleries and real-time local data for the metro D.C. area. Read more »
Mobile backend provider Kinvey found 73 percent of iOS and Android apps are basically static and don’t connect to a backend. IOS apps fare better with 35 percent of apps connecting to cloud backends while 18 percent of Android apps connect to these services. Read more »
Just like TV, mobile usage is highest during prime time, peaking at 9 p.m., according to Flurry. But just as important is the fact that mobile app use is relatively higher throughout the day than both Internet and TV, only eclipsed by TV in prime time. Read more »
Shazam, a popular music tagging mobile app, announced on Thursday that it would remove the five-song limit from the free version of its iOS software. Why? More tagging leads to more sharing, more Apple iAd impressions and more revenue-generating music purchases from partners. Read more »
The iPhone and Android app that helps you find day-of deals on hotels is expanding from a small number of major cities to last-minute vacation destinations. Hotel Tonight, currently in 23 major markets, is announcing 14 new, smaller markets where it will offer curated day-of deals. Read more »
Hipmunk, the San Francisco-based travel search startup, has finally brought its travel search application to the Android operating system. Hipmunk for Android, which for now only facilitates flight searches, is impressive because it retains all the slickness of the company’s web and iOS offerings. Read more »
If one thing became clear at this year’s GigaOM Mobilize conference, it’s that all the buzz about mobile technology is completely warranted. Since numbers speak louder than words, here are some of the most interesting stats that surfaced on stage at Mobilize 2011. Read more »
People have been asking to bring iPads, iPhones and Android phones to work for a few years now, but this is the year that IT departments everywhere are actually embracing it. Every enterprise will deploy smartphones and tablets to their workers over the next year. Read more »
Though the number of iOS and Android apps continues to grow by leaps and bounds, Yaron Galai bets that the trend of developing native apps is a short-term fad. Here’s why he thinks companies should reexamine their app strategy. Read more »
Heroku is reporting it saw more than 33,800 Facebook applications launched on its service since the social network giant unveiled new features at yesterday’s f8 conference. On the official Heroku blog, Adam Seligman notes “that’s more than 20 a minute.” Read more »
Since there isn’t one social network to rule them all just yet, I have at least a half-dozen apps on my smartphone to navigate the crazy social currents. But LiveGO for iOS aggregates Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ along with support for several IM services. Read more »
Cleantech, meet mobile. The intersection between these two industries has grown over the past twelve months as companies increasingly look to use smartphones as a platform to enable their services. This trend will accelerate in the future as more and more companies realize that mobile phones ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What’s an iOS app developer to do when a client asks to have a mobile app stress tested by snapping 10,000 images from an Apple iPad? Hiring an intern is one way to solve the problem, but building a LEGO robot might be the better option. Read more »
If you’re looking for the key to making money on the App Store for Apple’s iOS devices, a new report from Distimo suggests that in-app purchases are what you should be watching. In-app purchases now account for 72 percent of App Store revenue. Read more »
The latest mobile video sharing app, called Klip, aims to separate itself from the crowd with high-speed adaptive bit-rate technology enabling users to scroll through videos and a new tagging system that lets them set categories to keep track of when new videos are uploaded. Read more »
London-based network operator Vodafone announced Monday the three winners of its Mobile Clicks 2011 contest. The top three mobile startup app makers shared both a total of &Euro;225,000, but the apps couldn’t be more different, highlighting the breadth of opportunity in today’s growing app economy. Read more »
Appcelerator has built up a community of 1.5 million developers that have used its cross-platform development tool to build more than 25,000 apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Now it’s looking to turn that community into a selling opportunity by launching a marketplace for software modules. Read more »
955 Dreams, which started out building digital album iPad apps, is now getting into the music discovery and content creation business with a new iPhone app called Band of the Day that introduces an artist each day and comes with a lot of original exclusive content. Read more »
Verizon Wireless has rebuilt its VCast App Store with a new interface and better search capabilities thanks to a partnership with app discovery start-up Chomp. It’s part of a larger effort to ensure that Verizon’s store is a well thought out place to safely buy apps. Read more »
Foodspotting, the app for finding and rating restaurant dishes, is getting in on the daily deals action. It plans to announce Tuesday that it is hooking up with Atlanta-based local deals purveyor Scoutmob to offer 50 percent and 100 percent off coupons for nearby restaurants. Read more »
Thought you’d seen enough mobile photo apps? Well, Aviary has some different ideas. The New York City-based developer of advanced creative tools for photo, design and audio, is now bringing its web photo editing tools to mobile developers through an SDK for iPhone and Android devices. Read more »
The boom in mobile apps is opening up opportunities for mobile application development services, a market which is expected to grow to $100 billion by 2015. The latest to ride that growth is Apsalar, a mobile analytics and behavioral targeting platform that just raised $5 million. Read more »
It took several months, but Netflix for Android is now available to most Android smartphones and small tablets. The latest app update adds support for Android 2.2 and 2.3; a change from the earlier Netflix versions that were tested on a device-by-device basis. Read more »
Android app downloads are expected to overtake iPhone apps this year for the first time, according to research firm Ovum, and will nearly double iPhone downloads by 2016. The growth in Android app downloads could have big implications for freemium app developers. Read more »
Symbian’s not quite dead yet for Nokia. In fact, ever since the company decided to use Windows Phone 7 as a primary platform going forward, Symbian has matured quite quickly. The latest addition? Microsoft Office software that enterprises and business users are sure to like. Read more »
One of my personal “must have” free travel apps, Tripit, gained both an Android upgrade and an ad-free paid version on Thursday. Along with the news comes some interesting travel data from Tripit’s user base. Which do you think travels more for work or fun? Read more »
New data from app analytics firm Flurry found that younger users spend more time in freemium apps but don’t plunk down as much money while older users are the opposite, less free with their time but more likely to open up their wallets. Read more »
Former Ning CEO Gina Bianchini has launched a new social application called Mightybell, which tries to help people create, achieve and share experiences using step-by-step actions. The idea of Mightybell is to break up a specific goal into smaller steps, allowing people to experience something incrementally. Read more »
For all the advances smartphones have brought us, task management apps still seem to have room for improvements. Wunderlist, just updated for Android, is my current task app of choice due to cross-platform support with iOS, a web client, solid syncing and smart features. Read more »
Whether to go web app or native may soon become a moot point with the release of new app platform and delivery network from Strobe, which allows developers to build an app in HTML5 and deploy it as both a web and native app. Read more »
